How I Learned to be Less of a Coward

This blog post was written in a very honest moment and contains strong language, please do not read on if this would offend you.

When you can’t have children, Mother’s Day approaches with all the expectancy and welcome of a drunk uncle at Christmas. A whole day dedicated to celebrating your greatest pain and designed to make you feel more left out than you already do. Thank you Hallmark, you b****rds.

A few years ago we talked with friends who were in the same position as us regarding our general hatred of national-cashing-in-on-biological-necessities-day TM. We schemed to create our own alternative. I suggested we call it FMD, the M and D standing for Mother’s Day and I’ll let your imagination fill in the F. It was to be a glorious day of fun, the avoidance of the general population and a celebration of life as it came to us. It was going to be way more rock and roll than daffodils and sentimental cards, it was going to have booze, films, food and outrageous fun. The hiccup was we were all Christians and that meant being in church on Mother’s Day and the church had jumped right into bed with Hallmark on this one. Double b****rds. Avoiding the general populous would be troublesome, even more troublesome because two of our number, myself included, were vicars in training and as we all know vicars only work one day a week and we’re not allowed to take that day off.

That said. I was fixated. I would use my annual leave to avoid church on praise-healthy-reproductive-members-of-society-with-flowers-day TM. I would give my wife Lizzie the rock and roll celebration that her awesomeness deserved. We had gone through several miscarriages and that was not her fault, nor did she deserve to have that fact rubbed in her face. So in my first year as a trainee vicar in a church I was all geared up to ask Pete, the main vicar, for that day off but before I got to asking he had an idea for me; “What about Lizzie giving the talk on Mother’s Day?” Damn it. It was a good idea, a great idea actually but it wasn’t mine. I wanted to hide us away from everything, to get us to a safe distance and give two fingers to the world. His idea would be painful but would also give the chance to correct a few wrongs.

Lizzie had built up some resilience over the years of our marriage, mostly through the medical nightmares she’d been through but some of it just from living with me. This meant I wasn’t too afraid to ask her but I definitely hesitated a bit / several days and waited for a casual moment to slip it into conversation. When I plucked up the courage to ask she didn’t hesitate long. Myself, a few nurses and two of our friends are the only ones who have seen the agony Lizzie has been through; she’s a tough cookie and doesn’t duck out of much. She had developed a deeper understanding of childlessness over the years; about the imbalances in our culture and had helped a few women through their own struggles but this would be different. This would be staring down the beast right in its lair. A childless woman talking about her story on the day that excluded her the most.

Kudos to Pete, he was brave and called this just right. Lizzie got up that Sunday and shared her story with over a hundred people. At the end they applauded, they never applaud me. The thing that never ceases to amaze me when you share your deepest hurts with people is the number of people who say “me too”. We thought we were in the minority but after the service had finished we spoke to others who had never had their own children, people whose mum’s had died, mums who felt the crushing pressure of this day and wondered if there was not more to them than being a mum and felt guilty for even thinking it. Mother’s Day was ruining more people’s days than it was improving. I saw our church family with new eyes that day. It was full of people just like us, damaged by life and left excluded by these big celebrations.

This year I put FMD down in my diary again. I made sure I didn’t need to be in church on Sunday morning and I was finally going to give Lizzie the day she deserved, especially after being so brave last year. I told her my plans last week. At first she was excited but I saw that excitement quickly drain from her face. She told me about people in our church who found Mother’s Day as hard as she did, she loved the idea of a fun day but she couldn’t leave her friends to suffer alone.

When we first married we had a pair of rabbits live in our house. At the slightest hint of something wrong they would thump their big feet and run away to a dark corner. We now have a dog who, at the slightest hint of danger, will run straight at it and bark like crazy. Over my life I’ve been much more rabbit than dog. Some close friends have called me on it from time to time and slowly I have got better but deep down when a problem seems impossible I’ll run. My inbox is full of old emails that aren’t easy to reply to and with Mother’s Day approaching I tried to hide Lizzie and me away from the bad world but Lizzie had fought the enemy before and as a result brought a lot of healing and she had no intention of running.

I can’t think of any story where the hero defeats evil by running away or any great life where we admire their fleeing abilities; “Didn’t they run away well” we never said; “their ability to remove themselves from difficulty really inspired me” said no one ever. There’s no way around it, heroes fight the monsters. Even in tragedies where the monster prevails we know the heroes fought well and as a result their lives swell with significance and meaning.

We went to church this Sunday. There were moments of crass insensitivity and moments of genuine beauty as the pain in the room was noted. Truth be told we were left a little bruised, a little depressed. I still think Mother’s Day is philosophically flawed and I’m growing a little more confident in being in a minority on that one. What I’m happiest with is that we faced the beast; we refused to back down and we feel a little stronger for it and our church community is a little more aware. Small victories.

Life is full of difficulty and pain but your contribution to this world is likely to be from going through it rather than from running away; take it from a recovering coward.

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Dave left a geeky life in web development for a geeky life as a vicar. He is married to the wonderful Lizzie and enjoys baking, walking the dog, hanging out in coffee shops and binge watching box sets. After a sixth miscarriage Dave felt the time was right to start telling his story and loves being part of the Saltwater & Honey collective.

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11 Comments

Very beautiful and moving. I can see the strength in your wife’s posts on this blog – she seems quite remarkable and it really speaks to me. I am interested to know why you think it’s ‘philosophically flawed’ – Mothering Sunday is a historic date in the church calendar and whilst I think it has definitely been Hallmarkified, surely this is true for lots of things. Valentine’s Day must be hard for singles, some of whom find constant weddings of young couples in our churches as hard to stomach as childless couples do the frequent christenings and dedications. But it’s all a part of life, isn’t it? Doing life, grief, joy, sadness together, including through the rituals of the church. We can’t put the parts of life on hold that we happen to find hard – in our experience, joy and sadness shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. But maybe I’m misunderstanding, which I don’t mean to. I know you say that we need to face these things bravely, but you also seem to suggest that these days shouldn’t be celebrated – is that right?

Ally thank you for your comments and encouragement. You read right that Mother’s Day is something I personally don’t think is a great idea. I don’t shout about it much because people tend to look at you like you’ve got two heads when you do and I’ve had a 100% misunderstanding rate so far. Most seem to think I have something against mothers but I actually think Mother’s Day is bad for everyone including them. ‘Mothering Sunday’ as it used to be is, if we’re honest, dead as a church tradition; I don’t see anyone doing it and in reality it is Mother’s Day that is celebrated in churches now. I do think we should be celebrating weddings and christenings and sharing joys and sadnesses together however I don’t think we should be celebrating mother’s day, father’s day or valentines day. What these days do is to elevate a certain good thing into an ultimate thing; a status that elevates some and excludes others and breaks the fabric of community. Mother’s Day for example says motherhood is an elevated status because we don’t have days for singlehood etc. A good thing becomes an ultimate thing which is as unfair a pressure on mums as it is an unfair judgement on those who are excluded. I think that most churches already know this, this is why nearly all of them that I have been in make it about caring generally and give everyone a flower, in other words they don’t want to exclude and so create a ‘Happy Human Day’. This is a rambling response to what I think is a complex issue and something I would have been blind to had we not lost our own children. Hope it helps.

I posted a comment yesterday but it seems to have got lost in the ether !
The last two lines of the blog are true and I’m glad you are now beginning to learn that lesson, but I find your use of the F and B words unacceptable especially from someone with the care of young people ,many of whom are from Christian homes where parents (and teachers!) are trying to teach the children to control their emotions and not to use biologically offensive language!
It seems no one told you that in fact the 4th Sunday in Lent is not “Mothers’ day” but “Mothering Sunday” when traditionally young people working as servants gar from home where given the day off to go home and to attend their MOTHER church. It is NOT designed to celebrate your pain. (and if we reflect on the infant mortality rate in the years when this tradition started there would hardly be a woman present who had not lost children!)
Life has its hard moments and we cannot – and must not – require that other people are denied their moments of thankfulness and celebration because of our pain. My father died when I was 14 months old and as he was in the Merchant Navy he only saw me for 3 weeks of my life. It hurts when I see fathers playing with their children, but I do not freak out on “Fathers Day” (which IS a commercial and American import), and as a single (and childless) woman nor do I stay away from weddings or baptismal/ naming days!
I hope that you and Lizzie will be able to grow into the awareness that you are loved by God regardless of your family situation, and that you will have the Grace to be able to allow others to give thanks for their mothers and if appropriate to rejoice in their motherhood.

I have nothing against people celebrating and I have nothing against people’s joy; we haver christenings and birthdays and everyday life for that. I have something against a holiday that says mothers are important and others aren’t. I’ve added a language warning to the top of this page to accompany my original warning when I first posted this blog post.

Dave, I sympathize with both you and Lizzie, I admire Lizzie very much and remember how she stood on the altar last year and very bravely told of her heartache, I think most women were in tears and I for one have prayed for you every day since then. I am however very disappointed in the language you have chosen to use in your blog, I feel that it dishonours God and I have to agree with Ally who replied so beautifully to your comments. I lost my beloved husband two years ago after 50 years of marriage and for the 40 years of being a committed christian I prayed that he would make a commitment and come to Church with me and although he did come at Christmas, he never did make that commitment, this was my biggest heartache seeing couples in Church together but over the years God healed my broken heart and gave me peace. and I hope and pray that you and Lizzie will have the peace that passes all understanding that only Jesus can give.
Love to you both, Joyce Fell St. Lukes.

Is there a way to be proactive through the anger and pain? For different reasons a lot of people struggle with ‘Mothers Day’. Over the years at St Luke’s suggestions have been made to find a way to do it differently without success. That shouldn’t stop us trying.

Thanks for your thoughts Jacqui. I hope you can see in our blog our lives are about hope and new life through the pain. This blog post is actually about that, learning to be better not bitter. Take the anger with a pinch of salt, it’s meant to be more humorous, raw, honest and unprocessed than anything.

I quite agree with bloody Hallmark sentiments. It was actually originally a day for celebrating “Mother church”, ie your Diocesan Cathedral, which allegedly was the original church in the area and caused all the parishes to be formed from it.

People can forget just how difficult these sorts of celebrations are – for those who are childless (for whatever reason), for those who had poor relationships with parents, for those who are adopted, for those whose parents have died. There’s such a large group of folks who could find it hard.

Saltwater and Honey is a collection of voices sharing their stories about infertility, miscarriage, childlessness and faith. These experiences can be painful and leave you feeling isolated but we want you to know that you are not alone, it’s okay to grieve and your story matters.